soy

I have a confession to make. I am even guilty of telling myself that “ignorance is bliss” sometimes…

I’ve been afraid to ask what the ingredients are in my favorite local Japanese restaurant’s carrot ginger dressing because it tastes so damn good. Sorry, there is just no other way to put it. When I go, I always ask for the dressing on the side, dipping my fork in the dressing between each bite. But seriously, I could drink the entire little bowl of dressing they send out on the side, but I don’t because the knowledge I have gained about the ingredients used in most restaurants (not just Japanese restaurants) have led to me to believe there is almost a 100% certainty of GMO soy oil or other GMO ingredients being used in this particular dressing. So needless to say, I haven’t gone and had Japanese in a while but that doesn’t mean I don’t get my carrot ginger dressing fix!

4th of July is right around the corner and I really can’t think of a better way to celebrate Independence Day than a good old fashioned BBQ. But I have to be honest here, attending a BBQ produces a bit of anxiety for me every time. Will the host serve only beef hamburgers and hotdogs? (I don’t eat beef or any type hot dog.) Will the meat be organic? Will there be vegetarian options? Will the cook char the meat to death and produce heterocyclic amines that are known to cause colon cancer?

Needless to say, I am honestly a little disappointed when the host decides to serve things I don’t eat but get even more anxious when they offer to pick up some veggie burgers from the store for me. I am downright frightened of the ingredients in those frozen meat flavored patties. My response to their offer is always “No, thank you, I’ll bring a dish” and here’s why:

Neurotoxins & Carcinogens – The majority of store-bought veggie burgers contain some form of soy. Non organic soy is extracted using hexane, a chemical byproduct of petroleum refining. The food industry uses the hexane extraction method because it is cheap. Several studies have been published about the neurotoxicity of exposure of humans and animals to hexane, but the most alarming ones link exposure to brain tumors. Currently the FDA sets no limit to the amount of hexane that can be used in non-organic soy products and no one knows for sure how much residue is being consumed by the American public. If you want more info on this – the Cornucopia Institute released an excellent report about several popular veggie burger brands that use hexane. To quote top researcher Charlotte Valleys, “The bigger picture here is that hexane is being released into the atmosphere—since it’s an air pollutant. It leads to smog, which is ground-level ozone, which leads to a whole bunch of health problems, like asthma in kids. These effects are very real.” I don’t want this in my body or in the air I breathe – do you?